The Intermediates, a new group of works introducing extensive straw craftwork, focuses on the dispersion of materials and craft. While the various cultures of different regions have a degree of fundamental similarity, each civilization also constructs its own individuality; these works likewise explore folk concepts that have their own independent identity but, at the same time, a certain universality. Using straw―a material with folk implications, but which is common across human civilization―and the methodology of traditional straw craftwork, the artist approaches a level of interdisciplinary hybrid culture that transcends similarity and difference.

On the other hand, the material used in The Intermediates is artificial, not natural, straw. In earlier works like Female Natives (2010) the artist has used artificial materials such as plastic plants that represent nature in an industrial light. Humorously reflecting our modern environment and the ways in which it can cheaply, easily imitate and substitute nature, the artist ironically evokes the organic materials, crafts, and memories of nature originally implied by commercial substitutions that are routinely consumed and forgotten.

In the artist’s new sculptural group The Intermediates, three works make references to architecture from different cultures and religions. These include El Castillo, known as The Pyramid of Kukulcan, from the Mayan civilization; the Borobudur Temple, an ancient Buddhist temple in Indonesia estimated to have been constructed in the early 8th century; and Russia’s Lala Tulpan, constructed in the late 20th century and known as the “Tulip in Bloom.” These three landmarks, with contexts and styles derived from different periods, geographies, and religions, are not a representation of mainstream world history but were chosen arbitrarily and subjectively. While larger than models, the sculptures are of a median size that is well below the scale of the actual architecture. They are a colony of architectural representations reduced by an arbitrary ratio, made from prefabricated aluminum frames (not a heavy material meant to endure for centuries) and covered with straw thatching. Here, “intermediate” is not the intermediateness of a particular folklore configured by individual, geographic differences; it is a universal synthesis indicated by a mediation that can be generated only amidst the space between those individual cultures.

Set up between the three Intermediates referencing architecture are another six Intermediates that can be categorized as sculptural figures. Lion Dance on One Leg is a figure standing on one leg with a one-meter-
diameter spherical head adorned with a Korean bridal headpiece. Below its large head hang clusters of bells, like those hung around the necks of cows in India and ones used in shamanistic rituals and festivals; on the rear of its head is a cape in the form of a long tongue. Standing at 2.8 meters, Triple Sphere on Pyramid Totem is a figure consisting of three small, spherical heads decorated with a fountain-shaped ornament over a quadrangular pyramid torso. Vintage Indian bells hang from the three spheres, and artificial cacti and succulents sprout from the corners of the pyramid, as if growing out of the dried straw. Basket Totem on Triple Leg bears a densely-woven straw basket on its head and clutches a straw doll to its torso. Hairy Dragon Ball is the only piece that is not a vertical figure; spherical, it looks as if it will roll around the gallery space, with a head of unkempt hair made from densely-packed straw as if sprouting out from a thatched roofline. Chinese Bride is a seated figure resembling a bride covered head-to-toe in cloth in preparation for her wedding ceremony. Sea Lotus is a sculpture of a lotus blossom not yet fully in bloom. Bearing four petals on a base made from a root carving and adorned with clamshells and artificial seaweed, it appears as if it rose from the sea.

This installation group is formed through the combination of large, straw sculptures with familiar, regional architectural forms and figurative sculptures whose forms are at once geometrical and organic. Following The Intermediates into the interior of the exhibition space, we find ourselves in a location that seems ancient yet at the same time resembles an unfamiliar, otherworldly landscape. Straw, while associated with folklore, at a glance calls to mind totems of mysterious ideas lying dormant. The Intermediates bring on momentary collisions between disparate feelings and intimate emotions, arousing an awareness of a new hybrid sense of time and place.